Esoteric Evolution - 10

The Creation Process in Genesis

Repetition of earlier phases

Genesis and Hyperborea

The separation of the Sun

Darkness and chaos

The Spirit of the Elohim

The new phase

An example

The harmony of the spheres, the sound ether, and the "dance of substances"

Life ether and the Word

The light that shines in the darkness

Sources

The story of creation in six days as it is described in the book of Genesis in the Bible can only be understood if we base ourselves on the fact that the creation of the Earth was preceded by three earlier planetary states. During those three planetary phases - called in esotericism Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon - the creation about which Genesis speaks was prepared.

The following shows the past of the Earth and its future phases:

When the Earth phase appeared from the pralaya condition after Old Moon, the three previous planetary phases - Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon - first repeated themselves.

During these repetitions the Elohim, or Spirits of Form, added a new element every time. Thus, they worked on the progress of the Earth and therefore also on continuing evolution. Rudolf Steiner pointed out that the older and later repetitions partly overlapped each other. That makes everything very complicated and hard to understand.

In the lecture cycle about Genesis, Rudolf Steiner says that the events that are described in Genesis in the Bible refer especially to the third repetition, which took place on Old Moon. This repetition continues into the fifth day of creation (Gen.1:23). The fifth day is the period when the animals in the water and in the air are created. Only during the sixth day, when the human being is created, does a whole new element appear in the creation process that is clearly part of the Earth period.

It is important to realize and always keep in mind that all six phases of the creation in the story of Genesis are not happening in earthly materiality, but still completely in the spiritual world, specifically in the astral world. This means that we would not have been able to witness with our current physical eyes what was happening then.

The earth was desolate and empty

What enables us to conclude that the descriptions in Genesis 1 refer to a repetition of the Old Moon period? We can read that from the words: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." (Gen. 1:1) At that point, the Earth had repeated so much of the old Moon state that there existed a watery, fluid substance. At the same time, this fact indicates that, prior to what is described in Genesis 1, there must already have been a creation process, a process that resulted in the wildness, darkness, and primeval waters. In other words, this must have been the creation process we described in previous chapters, those of Old Moon, Old Sun, and Old Saturn.

Rudolf Steiner describes that the repetition of the Old Moon state took place from the era of Polaris to about halfway into Lemuria. During Polaris we find, within the great repetition of the Old Moon state, first a repetition of the Old Saturn period, while during Hyperborea the Old Sun state is also repeated.

As a result of this, during the first half of Hyperborea - when just as on Old Sun everything was still together as one - the body of the Earth looked like a gigantic sun, a sun that emanated a magnificent, radiating light. A paradisal situation therefore, which is indeed described in Genesis 2:8 as Paradise.

In sequence, the seven great evolutionary ages of the Earth period show the following picture:

It was in this sphere of magnificence, light, and darkness that the great change took place that put an end to the paradisal condition of the Earth. It began in about the middle of Hyperborea and continued into the time of Lemuria. What was happening there?

In that period, the creative Spirits of Form, the Elohim, released the Sun out of the larger heavenly body. The separation of the Sun was necessary to make a transition possible from an exclusively airy and gaseous condition to a watery one. This made it possible to lay the basis for what would later become the inner, feeling element, both in human beings and in the animals. And in its turn, this became the basis for the later development of the human soul and human consciousness.

Evolution sun-earth

The Hebrew opening sentence of Genesis, B'reshit bara elohim et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz - translated in most Bible editions as: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" - indicates this separation process of the Sun. Because during Hyperborea the Sun left the still developing Earth, which was the larger heavenly body, a separation occurred between, on the one hand, the sun-like that preserved the higher spiritual forces in itself and, on the other hand, the part that would later become the Earth with its solid, mineral element. It was the beginning of the state of heaven and earth.

The separation of the Sun in that primeval time of the Earth happened very gradually and took an extremely long time. What happened with what was left behind, the still developing Earth and what it was bearing in itself?

With the Sun, the light also was lost. What remained was dark, darkness. For at that time the Sun was also not yet shining from outside. That only came later. What remained was a primal state that was dark, watery, and chaotic. Chaotic because the warmth, airy and watery elements streamed through each other in disorder and without direction and form. For with the Sun and the light, the ordering creative powers of the Elohim had also withdrawn from the original heavenly body in which Earth and Moon were still united.

The Bible describes this leftover state as "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep" and then follows with the words "…and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters." In Old Hebrew: Ruach elohim m'rachephet al p'ne hammajim.

As was shown in the previous article, Rudolf Steiner said that Ruach elohim should not be translated as the Spirit of God, but as the Spirit of the Elohim. The Spirit of the Elohim is the Sun Logos, the Word. Rudolf Steiner also rejected the translation of the rest of the sentence. The expression "the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters" does not match what was really happening, he said. The Old Hebrew can only be correctly translated if you understand what it is about.

If you want to render Ruach Elohim m'rachephet al p'ne hammajim correctly in its context, you would have to say: "The Spirit of the Elohim was brooding over the darkness of materiality." We should imagine this "brooding" as a creative activity of incubating, radiating warmth that brings something new to manifestation. Out of the warmth element the Elohim radiated new forces from outside into the sphere of darkness, into the state where warmth, the airy and the watery moved chaotically into and through each other.

With the separation of the Sun and the new manner of working of the Ruach Elohim, the Spirit of the Elohim, a totally new phase began in the work of creation, a phase that we find described in the events that took place in the six days of creation as related in the Bible.

For this new phase, with which Genesis begins, the Elohim made use of even higher creative etheric forces. Etheric forces are fine, dynamic, formative spiritual forces that have the capacity to form and organize spiritual substance, and eventually transform it into physical substance.

Rudolf Seiner calls the spiritual, etheric forces with which the Elohim worked warmth ether, light ether, sound ether, and life ether. The four etheric forces were applied in the development of the elements of warmth, air, water, and earth. The following shows their mutual connections:

warmth	air	water	earth
warmth ether	light ether	sound ether	life ether

With these etheric forces the Elohim and, with them, even higher hierarchies could, as was said before, work in formative and creative ways on what the continuing development of the earth, humanity, and nature needed - and also to preserve what they had created.

An example from our current times may illustrate the workings of these high creative beings and the way they make use of etheric forces. Rudolf Steiner tells us that at night, when we are sleeping, these creative beings work on our physical body through our etheric body.

In this process it is the spiritual forces of the warmth ether, light ether, sound ether, and life ether that restore our physical bodies down into the organs, and bestow new forces on us down into our inner being. If we were clairvoyant, he says, we would be able to observe their working as streams of warmth, shining light forces, and living sounds or harmonies streaming through our body especially during the night, but also by day. They enable us to get up refreshed and rested in the morning.

Which high, creative beings are working in these etheric forces? They are the Kyriotetes (Spirits of Wisdom), the Dynameis (Spirits of Movement), and naturally also the Elohim (Spirits of Form). Creatively they think and speak their forces into the flowing warmth, into the radiating light, and into the harmonies of sounds and life energies that stream through the etheric world and our etheric body into our physical body. In this way they restore us and help us along in our development.

In their turn, these high spiritual beings are themselves filled by even much higher divine forces that come from the Logos, the Sun Spirit, the creative World Word. In this way, all these creative beings and spiritual powers work together, complement and reinforce each other with the principal goal of enabling human beings to develop further on earth.

The high spiritual powers that bestow forces on us in this way in our time are the same spiritual powers and forces that led and gave form to the creative process of the Earth in primeval times.

We return to the creation process in primeval times of the Earth, Hyperborea, when the watery element also makes its appearance. Rudolf Steiner tells us that the more the watery element grew on Earth, the more the Elohim in their creative work, besides the warmth and light elements - and therefore the warmth and light ethers - could also make use of the sound ether, and later also life ether.

Sound ether consists of sound forces that originate in the harmony of the spheres, a realm in the high spiritual light world that consists of everlasting sounds, rhythms, and melodies that work creatively. Its sounds, rhythms, and melodies especially create by means of fluid substances, forms, and figures.

This music of the spheres that streams out of high spiritual worlds was used by the Elohim to create the most multi-faceted substances and forms in the primeval waters of the Earth. With these tones and sounds they released the substances that were still suspended in undifferentiated states in the primeval waters, they separated them and organized them into forms that have purpose.

You might say that the substances that were originally suspended in water "obeyed" the music of the spheres and ordered themselves according to its melodies and rhythms. In esotericism this is called "the dance of substances."

Rudolf Steiner compared this process with what happens when you pull the bow of a violin along the edge of a metal plate strewn with fine sand, with the result that the plate begins to vibrate. What you see then is that the tones make harmonious forms in the sand. These forms are called Chladni sound figures after the person, Ernst Chladni (1756-1827) who discovered them. In our time, Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto used the sound ether forces in his experiments with music and water. These also resulted in extraordinary, harmonious forms and figures.

We can see the forms and figures the Elohim created with the aid of sound forces in earthly substance in primeval times in the multi-faceted forms in nature. We can recognize them in the rhythmically ordered ways of growing and blossoming of plants and trees, but also in the structure of the physical bodies of human beings and animals. We may therefore say: the music of the spheres with its creative sound - and ether forces is the ground of all forms and figures on Earth.

The Elohim, the Spirits of Form, not only used the forces of warmth ether, light ether, and sound ether, but also those of life ether. Life ether came into being when through sound ether an even higher creative power started working into the becoming Earth.

This higher creative power is called "the Word." As Thought or Word streaming through space, it gives sense and meaning to ordered world sounds. As a result, the entire creation was permeated by sense and meaning.

Rudolf Steiner pointed out that the Word, streaming through space, is the origin of all life on earth, of truly moving, streaming life that brings about development.

In summary of the above we may say: the Elohim created their grand work through incubating warmth, light from the separated Sun, spiritual sounds from the harmony of the spheres, and the spirit power of the cosmic Word, Logos, Life.

To conclude, we return briefly to the primeval state in Genesis. The Sun had largely separated. On the Earth reigned darkness and chaos. Then came the new impact: from outside the Elohim radiated sun-like light into the darkness. In that light sounded the creative cosmic Word. How do we find this formidable event described in the Bible? In Genesis 1:3: "And God said: 'Let there be light;' and there was light." In this way, on the first day of creation, light came into being in the darkness of the Earth.

Old Saturn

Rudolf Steiner, Genesis, Secrets of Creation, CW 122, lectures of August 17 and 18, 1910.
All quotations from the Old Testament are from the Revised Standard Version.